


Winner Takes All

by SardonicusRust



Category: Rusty Quill RPF
Genre: Betting, Do Not Archive (The Magnus Archives), Fisting, Fluff and Humor, Gambling, Games, Liar's Dice, M/M, Mentions of Sex, Non-Explicit Sex, Pirate's Dice, RPF, Sexual Humor, The Most High Stakes Of All, dice - Freeform, wager
Language: Español
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 01:20:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29252112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SardonicusRust/pseuds/SardonicusRust
Summary: It's a high stakes game of liar's dice betweenAlexander Always-Taking-More-Than-One-Man-Can-Handle-But-Handling-It-Like-A-Boss-Anyways NewallandBenjamin You-Think-I-Can't-Do-The-Thing?-WATCH-ME Meredith.
Relationships: Ben Meredith/Alexander J. Newall
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	Winner Takes All

**Author's Note:**

> i was sitting on the floor surrounded by dice one fine evening, and alexander j newall himself came over and asked if we were playing liar's dice and wanted to join. i cannot express to you how delighted i was to learn that this is a game he knows. it's my favorite game. seriously. i make everyone play it at any opportunity. i carry 20 d6 in my purse at all times in case i'm with pals and we need a game.
> 
> YOU DON'T HAVE TO UNDERSTAND HOW THE GAME WORKS TO READ THIS. don't worry. i'm including the game rules at the end, in case anyone is curious.

Ben cracks his knuckles.

Alex makes brief eye contact. His lips twitch, almost a smile, and he cracks his neck.

Ben resists the urge to look back at his dice. He tries again to feel his face from the inside. It was still, right? He feels like he’s doing a good stonewall with his face. He wishes he can see what he looks like from the outside to make sure. He feels like he isn’t smiling, but is he keeping his mouth too non-smiling and passed not-smiling into frowning? Maybe he should scratch his nose to hide his face. But face-touching is a definite sign of stress, that’s something Alex himself had told him after their first live event. Dammit, Alex is better at reading social cues, the corporate CEO bastard. He knows the game.

_ Focus, Meredith _ , he silently scolds himself. Thinking of Alex as a CEO is bound to break his poker face. Or at least reduce the blood in his brain. Usually he finds his oh-so-competent boyfriend to be sexy as all get out, his competency kink the size of the whole British Isles, but tonight, he wishes Alex to be a little less competent. He wants to see him make a mistake. He wants to see him be human, a crack in that perfect veneer.

He wants him to lose.

The neck crack. Was that a tell? A confident one, or bracing for a bluff? Or, shit, had his own knuckle cracking been a tell? But that could be a good thing. He can use that. Pretend like it was a tell for a bluff, while telling the truth.

"Three sixes."

"Four sixes."

Fuckssake. Alex hadn’t even hesitated. Ben knows he should've shot back an answer just as fast, but the moment has already passed. And sixes, too, he should've done fives to give himself an out. Unless Alex is bluffing. They only each have three dice left.

He lifts his mug straight up, showing his dice in a call. Heart pounding, he takes the moment of open field between bluffs and truths and counting and gambling to lick the sweat from his upper lip. Good thing he tends to sweat often. With any luck, Alex won’t be able to read anything from that.

He bares two sixes. Alex could have two. Or one and a wild. Or two wild. Surely, Alex has the probability all figured out- three dice each, six options, but then- how would he account for the wild?-

Alex lifts his mug to show a four, a two, and a five.

Ben lets himself grin as Alex selects the two and sets it aside.

They set up again, dumping their dice back into their mugs, shaking them, and upending them on the floor with a satisfying clatter. Carefully, Ben peeks at his own and tries again to feel his face from the inside. Alex wanted to play fast? Fine.

He drops his mug back down. It’s Alex's turn. He starts quickly. "Two fours."

"Two fives."

"Three fives."

"Three sixes."

Alex lifts his mug, and Ben shows his dice as well, flying on adrenaline and instinct. He has a three, a six, and a wild.

Alex has two sixes. A good hand. Ben has never been able to resist a bit of a gloat.

"Ha!" he laughs, grabbing all three of his dice and dumping them into his mug, giving it a swirl. "You could've said four sixes and been fine!"

"Wilds are the worst." Alex delicately stacks his dice on the pile to the side, and shakes the single remaining die in his mug, snapping it down on the floor in a confident move.

Alex begins the betting- the loser always starts the bets.

And he does the absolute _ fucking worst,  _ son-of-a-bitch, bullshit dickhead move.

"Two sixes," he says, without looking at his dice. His eyes are bright because he knows. He  _ knows _ Ben hates that.

Fuck. No point in trying to read his face. Ben checks his own. He has two sixes and a four.  _ Fuck fuck fuck fuck. _

"Three sixes," Ben says, his only option. Alex lifts his mug.

A three. Ben snorts and chucks one die aside, knocking over Alex's stack, and snapping his mug down at the same time as Alex. He glances at his dice and silently swears again. A pair of wilds.

"Two sixes," he says coyly, repeating Alex's bet from earlier.

"Three sixes," Alex shoots back.

If Alex has a six, he's fucked. There are only three dice left in the game.  _ What's the likelihood they're all sixes? _ Ben lifts his mug, sure this is the end, already smiling.

Alex bares a six, and Ben actually shouts  _ motherFUCK _ before throwing his dice away. Now he's really sweating, palms damp, pits damp, even the backs of his knees damp.

One v one. This is it. He doesn't want to lose. He can't lose. He needs this, he wants the win, he wants to laugh in Alex's face and punch the air and take all the bliss and joy that victory will bring with it. Please, he thinks silently, begging the fickle threads of the universe, gravity and probability and the particular physics of the rolling motion of a cube. Please.

He flips his mug upside down, the single dice clattering beneath, and lifts the edge facing him the tiniest amount to see what he has.

Four dots stare up at him.

He needs to act fast. He’d been thinking ahead, planning ahead, and had already decided even before casting his die.  _ Truth or lie. Truth or lie? _

"One six," he says, the only thing he really can say.

"Two sixes."

Alex says it without missing a beat, right on the heels of Ben speaking, and has his whole weight leaned on the top of his mug, grinning ear to ear. Is he grinning because he knows he's won? Or because he wants Ben to sweat it out for a moment?

Ben is done sweating. He throws his mug into the air, baring the four, and Alex shout-groans in anger, knocking his mug over with the back of his hand, showing a six.

"I should have  _ known _ !" Alex cries. "Too good to be true!"

"I won! I won! You couldn't do anything!" Ben is laughing, cackling like a corvid, smiling so hard his cheeks hurt. "I won I won I  _ won _ !"

"I couldn't do anything, if I just hadn't rolled a bloody six- if I called it there, I was wrong, and I couldn't go up- I should've known you were lying, nobody has a six on their last dice-"

"You did! You did, I won!"

"God dammit. I know better than to trust dice. Bloody- probability, it's just  _ luck- _ "

"That last round, sure, maybe, but you got DOWN TO ONE by being LESS GOOD THAN ME! I'm the best, I won, I'm the winner, and  _ tonight _ ," Ben is crowing, both hands up in the air over his head in an unrepentant display of bad sportsmanship, " _ I'm gonna get the fist!!! _ "

"Next time we're not playing for it, it's just going to be my turn-" Alex humphs, gathering their dice and standing up.

"Sure, next time, whatever- but this time, I WON and I'm GETTING THE  _ FIST _ ! Glove up, loser!" Ben says, still shouting as he gets to his feet. "Christ, I am the WINNER! I'm so  _ HARD  _ RIGHT NOW!"

"Quit shouting before we've even started, we don't need the neighbors coming to tell us off before I've even got a finger in you."

"They can't stop me, I won!"

"Mhmm. Go get on the bed, I'll get the lube."

**Author's Note:**

> Liar's Dice Rules:  
> -everyone starts with five d6 in whatever cups can fit them under without them stacking- a mug, a solo cup, whatever. Don't use clear cups.  
> -1's are wild.  
> -you shake them in your mug and flip it down on the table to cast your dice and hide them. You look at your own (just tip the edge of the mug up and peek) and bet on the entire pool, including your own. Say you say four 5's.  
> -the next person can either keep it going and place another bet after yours, or try and call your bet to be wrong. anyone can call any bluff at anytime, not just the next person. If they place another bet, they must increase one value. So they can say they don't believe there are four 5's, between everyone's dice, or they can either say five of any number (because they've increased the number of dice) or four 6's, because they've increased that number. You can bet as high as you want- you could just jump to ten of something, if you wanted.  
> -the round ends when someone calls a bet. This is done by saying 'no' or 'call', or lifting their mug to show their dice. Everyone shows their dice and you count to see whether the called bet is right or wrong. If it's exactly on or more, it's right, and whoever called loses a dice. If it's wrong, the person making the bet loses a dice. Wilds always count toward the bet. When you're out of dice, you're out.
> 
> reasons this game is fun  
> -you have to pay attention the whole time to how many dice everyone has left and what others have bet, so you can try and guess what they might have and base your guess on the collective  
> -all you need to play is something to cover dice with, and the dice. so it's really easy to travel with or bring to a restaurant or a friend's.  
> -shaking a mug full of dice is fun and loud. (if you don't like that, you can just cover the dice already on the table or on a rug and give them a rattle to shake them up.)  
> -you can lie to make people think you've got something that you don't, watch them make a bid based on that, and call them out and it's good fun  
> -seriously if you're a sore winner, it's the most fun game. if you're a sore loser, it's also the most fun game cos you can chuck dice at people.  
> -it's not just luck, it's a lot of trying to read faces to detect lies, making either safe or brave bets to fuck over the next person, calling people liars, remembering bets and how many dice people have, probability math, trying to lie yourself.  
> -apparently alexander j newall knows this game. i've never met anyone else who knew this game except my family and we've taught it to everyone else we play with. but alex knows it. fuck yes.
> 
> -you don't actually have to play with the intent that the winner gets fisted


End file.
